


in the hour of dawn (i'll wait for you)

by Vilchen



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Castles and knights, Established Relationship, Hurt, Katsuki Yuuri Needs a Hug, M/M, YOI Angst Week 2020, possible character death is not the same as actual character death i promise, possible major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27994401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vilchen/pseuds/Vilchen
Summary: «Keep going. We’re almost there,» Mila says, catching him by the sleeve of his torn tunic to pull him along. The set of her jaw is tense, but her grip, though firm, is not unkind. Through the static wall cutting his mind off from the battlefield that is his body, Yuuri distantly wonders how she can bear to touch him at all.
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12
Collections: YOI Angst Week 2020





	in the hour of dawn (i'll wait for you)

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for YOI Angst Week 2020, Day 4: Numb | Separation 
> 
> There is a scene in which Yuuri experiences an anxiety attack, and if you would like to skip it then stop reading at "Looking down at his hands.." and continue at the next line of dialogue. Mind the tags and take care of yourselves ♡ If you would like to ask me about anything beyond the tags, message me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/vilchenwrites) and I'll be happy to help you with any concerns! 
> 
> And thank you, Kathe, for being such a treasure ♡

Yuuri struggles to keep up with Mila’s hurried pace as she leads him further into the castle. Oil lamps flicker violently against the stone walls in their passing. His vision swims, catching on dark corners and his own lurking shadow as if they contain the wrath of the God almighty themself. The sound of the roaring stadium still rings in his ears despite the increasing distance put between them, forcing his leaden limbs to work as his heart pounds terror through his veins. Yuuri stumbles, unsteady on his legs, and leans hard against the cold wall, gasping for breath as his vision refuses to focus.

«Keep going. We’re almost there,» Mila says, catching him by the sleeve of his torn tunic to pull him along. The set of her jaw is tense, but her grip is not unkind though it is firm — through the static wall cutting his mind off from the battlefield that is his body, Yuuri distantly wonders how she can bear to touch him at all.

She leads him up the steps of a familiar staircase, into a corridor spaciously lined with sturdy wooden doors. They stop by the first on their left; Mila doesn’t knock as she lets herself in, opening the door wide into a bedchamber Yuuri knows as intimately as if it were his own, from the well-loved book spines in the bookshelf—many of which a smooth, lulling voice had read aloud to him at night—to the royal blue bed quilt thrown across the bed, where a waterfall of silver would spill across the pillows in sleep.

A painful moment passes in which Yuuri forgets to breathe, looking at how low the fire burns in the fireplace when Victor has always so stubbornly refused to let it die before. He blinks, vision now swimming with unshed tears.

«Yuuri.» Mila reaches for his dirtied hands and holds them tightly in her own, clenching down as if it will stop them both from shaking. «I must go,» she says, voice quivering as she presses her wobbly lips into a thin line. «I… I must— Someone must be with him.»

Yuuri swallows past the lump in his throat, choking down a sob as Mila squeezes him one last time before she tears herself away. The door slams shut behind her with such finality that Yuuri must close his eyes as he surrenders to the tears finally rolling down his cheeks. He swore he would not cry should he get to see him once more, but so few of Yuuri’s wishes have come true—what’s one more? Victor will not see him cry, will not see him at all, and Yuuri’s last memories of them will be tainted by the given pain as much as the inflicted pain.

Looking down at his hands, all he sees is red. Blood, crusted and cooled like a second skin between his fingers, underneath his nails, soaked into his tunic from when he fell to the ground holding him, so limp and pale, almost gone in Yuuri’s trembling arms—

Yuuri heaves for air, falling to his knees and gasping for breath as his ribcage rapidly shrinks to strangle his lungs. He claws at the neckline of his shirt, unexpectedly meeting the steel of his armor instead of fabric. It’s different than what he wore back home, heavier and with clasps Victor once showed him how to unfasten, but his shaking hands can only tug and tear in hopes of getting it off. Fear clouds him, first his mind and then his sight and then it’s pouring into his lungs and filling them with sand, choking him and forcing precious air out of reach. Black spots start dancing in his vision.

Somewhere far away, a door opens and someone steps in, carrying a bucket which they nearly drop as they see Yuuri on the floor. A voice tries to speak to him, but everything is muddled and distant as the struggle for air grows heavier. Hands, small and quick, brush his frantic ones aside to open the clasps, freeing him piece by piece until breathing comes easier and the black spots disappear.

«Yuuri— My lord? What should I—»

Yuuri blinks up at the clearing image of a young man, freckled and built like he could do little more than break a twig. Guang Hong hovers unsurely above him as Yuuri sinks further into the rug on the floor. The dark grey stone of the ceiling looks back at him as he blinks. He knows all the cracks and lines of it after countless months and nights spent staring up at it, Victor’s warm weight nestled into his side and his deep breaths fanning out against Yuuri’s neck in the calm of night.

It doesn’t look quite the same anymore.

«My lord, we need to treat your wounds,» Guang Hong says, lightly brushing against one of the bleeding cuts on his thigh. «I… I will clean you. You don’t have to move.»

He disappears out of Yuuri’s line of sight, returning quickly with the bucket and a damp washcloth which he then uses to gingerly scrub Yuuri’s face and neck. The water is a notch above lukewarm and must’ve been brought straight from the kitchens, a luxury Yuuri was never supposed to experience save the indulgent washes he shared with Victor. The first time he sat down in a basin of steaming hot water after his capture had been the greatest bliss, only surpassed by the feeling of Victor’s nimble fingers carding through his hair to untwist the knots and tangles. Heaven had seemed so close back then, with Victor’s warm presence behind him and the easy rhythm of which he would recite bits and pieces of whatever he’d read that day for Yuuri’s benefit, just to share what could be shared.

Guang Hong helps him out of his ruined tunic, putting it away to be cleaned and mended. He manoeuvres Yuuri to sit up with his back propped against the bed, meticulously scrubbing the grime off his hands in silence. Yuuri stares numbly at the pile of cloth on the floor, soiled by blood. They will try to wash the stains out, he’s sure, but they will certainly fail.

After Guang Hong has washed him down and wrapped his wounds tight with clean fabric, he retrieves a tunic from one of Victor’s chests.

«Please lift your arms, my lord.»

It is an act of cowardice, but Yuuri holds his breath as the tunic is pulled down over his head, casting his gaze down as Guang Hong laces up the front of it. The sleeves are too long and fall past his knuckles, pooling around his wrists as if he is but a dainty damsel.

«Please don’t call me that,» he murmurs. «I’m no lord in this castle.»

A brief pause. Yuuri keeps his head down and does not see what expression Guang Hong makes, be it satisfaction, distaste or simply a moment of surprise. Either way, his tone of voice does not stray from the path of cautious respect he’s been following since it became clear that Yuuri was, in fact, not dying on the floor.

«I’m afraid you will have to get used to it, my lord. I hear the previous—» Yuuri’s hunched shoulders make him pause. «— _the_ _lord_ was very adamant about what the price would be,» he says, looking down at Yuuri with what could be either sympathy or pity swimming in his eyes. Guang Hong gathers his supplies quickly and efficiently to leave, but halts with his hand on the doorknob.

«There have been no news yet of his fate. They say we’ll know by dawn,» he says, and Yuuri can tell now what that look on his face was earlier. Guang Hong turns to the door, sparing Yuuri from the weight of that pitying gaze on him for any longer.

«There is still hope, my lord.»

The door falls shut behind him, allowing him only a glimpse of the armoured guards stationed outside. Yuuri tilts his head up to a ceiling that no longer offers comfort and closes his eyes.

Of course sleep does not come. Rest has never come easy to him, be his mind at peace or not. Quietly, he counts back from one hundred, first in the language Victor taught him and then in the language of his birth. Victor had always shown great interest in how Yuuri pronounced every syllable when he spoke his native tongue, so different from what he himself knew. Curiosity was what mellowed the hard exterior of Victor’s armor back when they first met, and his genuine respect of the culture and language ingrained in Yuuri’s bones is what had made him reach back as the game of war he’d been raised to play shifted beneath his feet. As strangers poked and prodded at him to determine his value in this new, foreign place during the day, listening to Victor’s steady voice in the evening as he read out loud outside his cell kept Yuuri out of the darker crevices of his mind. In many ways, their conversations kept his mother’s son alive. It had been an equal exchange between them; first shared bits and pieces of their languages, then tales of their lives outside the confines of the castle. With time came familiarity, after some time came trust, then devoted friendship and curious touches, which grew into stolen kisses and sweet promises—

_«…a shared life.»_

Oh, what he would do to have Victor read for him again now. To hear his voice, so close to his ear that the words he breathes onto Yuuri’s skin are like the physical caress of his sweet lips. He’d been so excited to share this newest book with Yuuri, this particular collection of poetry being one of his most treasured possessions and almost as dear to his heart as the man he would now get to share them with. They’d only gotten through one poem that night, busy as they were tracing those phrases about the beauty of love onto each other’s skin.

Many of their nights had ended like that, lost to each other’s bodies and pleasure. In fact, perhaps…

Yuuri sneaks his hand underneath one of the pillows on the unmade bed, soon enough finding the well-loved spine with his fingertips. He retrieves it from its place of rest, laying it in his lap and flipping through the heavy pages with trembling fingers. His eyes glide down the inked words blindly, unable to extract their meaning from the tangles of a foreign alphabet. If he is to be referred to as a lord from now on, perhaps they will finally now see it in their interest to teach him how to read their texts.

Somewhere halfway through the book, a woven thread rests between two pages and Yuuri’s hands still, hovering above the last poem they’d read together. His exhale trembles like clear crystal in the air as the phantom of that night slides up on him, and he closes his eyes on the tears threatening to spill.

He cannot remember the exact words, but he recalls the low timbre of Victor’s voice as he spoke, the whisper of sound as the rest of his braid came undone in Yuuri’s hands and long tresses slid past his shoulders to frame his face and its look of fondness as he gazed down at the book in his lap. Love spilled from his lips, influenced by the reverence already woven into the phrases, but shaped by the purpose of which the words were spoken; meant to be shared with the person he held most dear.

Yuuri, his dearest, who was meant to die at the hands of the king’s most valued warrior, but who instead saw nothing but devotion in the eyes of the man he loves as he shoved his blade between the plates of Victor’s armor, falling with him to the ground as bitter fear swamped every crack and crevice of his mind. _Stay_ , he swore he could hear Victor say as red flowed between them, but instead he was torn away by guards — _to save him_ , some part of him promised then; _to kill you_ , another part had supplied.

Now, hours away from the arena and hours away from the news of Victor’s fate, Yuuri cries over the pages of a love poem, praying for the sun to one day shine on them both.

* * *

It’s today: all of yesterday dropped away

among the fingers of the light and the sleeping eyes.

Tomorrow will come on its green footsteps;

no one can stop the river of the dawn.

No one can stop the river of your hands,

your eyes and their sleepiness, my dearest.

You are the trembling of time, which passes

between the vertical light and the darkening sky.

The sky folds its wings over you,

lifting you, carrying you to my arms

with its punctual, mysterious courtesy.

That is why I sing to the day and to the moon,

to the sea, to time, to all the planets,

to your daily voice, to your nocturnal skin.

It’s today: all of yesterday dropped away

among the fingers of the light and the sleeping eyes.

Tomorrow will come on its green footsteps;

no one can stop the river of the dawn.

It’s today, it’s today…

**Author's Note:**

> I would say I'm sorry if it hurt, but in truth I must admit that I would be a liiiittle bit disappointed if it didn't. ^-^; And I had a blast writing this! Sadly I never got to finish any other works for angst week this time (because I have horrible luck and life blew up in my face), but I might continue this one day. Maybe.
> 
> The poem is Sonnet XLIX, from ‘Cien sonetos de amor’ by Pablo Neruda. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! Comments are always very much appreciated ♡
> 
> [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/vilchenwrites)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/vilchen_writes)


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